Biografia
Charley and Nora Guthrie named their son after the Democratic president elected that year. Woodrow Wilson Guthrie faced many hardships in his youth—his house burned down, his sister Clara died in a fire, his father's small-town business and political efforts failed, and his mother, suffering from undiagnosed Huntington's Disease, was declared insane. Despite this, he found joy in performing—dancing, playing harmonica, and writing songs—and in learning, reading extensively at the public library. In 1933, he married Mary Jennings, five years younger, and they had three children together. In 1935, he joined the migrants from Oklahoma and Arkansas driven to California by the Dust Bowl. His songs evolved from depicting the migrants' hardships to encouraging their unionization. Although he wrote a column for the Weekly People, he never became a member of the Communist Party. When Will Geer landed a role in the play "Tobacco Road," he invited Woody to join him in New York, where Woody met Pete Seeger, Lee Hays, Leadbelly, and Cisco Houston. He was commissioned to compose songs for an unfinished documentary about Washington State's Grand Coulee Dam, and it was in the Pacific Northwest that his family left him. Returning to New York in 1940, Woody joined Pete Seeger's Almanac Singers and married Marjorie Mazia, a dancer with Martha Graham. His autobiography, Bound for Glory, was published in 1943. During World War II, he served in the Merchant Marine, surviving the torpedoing of three ships. In 1947, his and Marjorie's daughter, Cathy, died in an apartment fire. They had three more children: Arlo, Joady, and Nora. In 1953, he married for the third time, to Anneke Van Kirk. They had a daughter, Lorinna Lynn Guthrie. After their divorce, Lorinna was adopted by acquaintances and had no further contact with Woody. She died prematurely at age 19 in a car accident in California in 1973.
During the 1950s, Woody experienced episodes of irrational behavior and often could not play his guitar; he was eventually diagnosed with Huntington's Disease. Throughout the late 1950s and into the 1960s, a new generation of musicians, including Bob Dylan, began rediscovering and performing his music, adapting some of it to support the Civil Rights movement.
